Page:Taming of the Shrew (1921) Yale.djvu/139

of the Shrew satirical sequel to The Shrew, which he called The Woman's Prize, or the Tamer Tam'd, dated variously from 1604 to 1621. In this play Katherine has died and Petruchio is married to Maria, a cousin of his first wife's, by whom he is henpecked and subdued.

The most important and most famous version of Shakespeare's play is Garrick's Katharine and Petruchio, which was first given at Drury Lane on March 18, 1754. Garrick's chief motive in his work was to shorten and prune the original, which he did so successfully that his work, generally performed as an afterpiece to some tragedy, has only three comparatively brief acts. This was accomplished by omitting the Induction and the entire secondary plot of the comedy, including the characters of Grumio, Lucentio, Tranio, Vincentio, the Pedant, and the Widow. He introduced a 'Music Master' to play Hortensio's 'Broken Lute' scene, gave to Biondello Gremio's descriptive speeches about the wedding, had them spoken to a servant named Pedro, presented Hortensio and Bianca as already married, and changed Curtis from a man into an old woman. This latter transformation has, by the way, become a generally accepted stage tradition, along with the representation of the Tailor as a stutterer. Naturally Garrick added to the text of the play throughout, his most famous original passage being Katharine's soliloquy after the wooing scene at the end of the First Act: